


Threshold

by SharpestRose



Category: Lord of the Rings (2001 2002 2003), Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ring knows all the dark places in the mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Is there something you crave? Something sexual? Something precious? Someone special? Anything? Then you have felt it. It's there -- in the longing, in the lust: the breath of desire. The caress of the threshold. Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are._

 _Everything._

\- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman.

  
Threshold

  
It's bad luck to go to bed with an argument still hanging, but Sam's almost forgotten what sleeping on a bed is like.

No, that's a lie. He remembers. It wouldn't be so terrible hard to lie down on rock and dirt every night if he didn't have the memory of soft pillows so clear in his head. But their luck isn't a healthy thing regardless of arguments, so it can't do a lot of harm that he and Frodo aren't on civil terms.

They can't save Stinker, there's nothing left in him to save and Sam thinks it's strange that Frodo, usually so clear-sighted, won't see that. Not that their fight was really about Gollum underneath the words. It wasn't about anything except anger and fear and darkness.

Gollum's off somewhere else, getting a bite to eat or somesuch. Sam doesn't know for sure and doesn't care. He settles down to keep watch, because he knows that sleep won't come to him while his head's so full of thinking. Frodo's breathing is still a bit choked from the chill in his lungs, that bog water would knock the sturdiest of folk down into sickness and Frodo's not near sturdy any longer.

Sam reaches out to smooth his palm over Frodo's knotted curls, still so soft despite the lack of care given to them. Fever-warm in the biting night air, the days are humid but the nights are windy and dank. Frodo mews quietly, it's barely a sound at all but Sam knows it as well as he knows the look of sunshine. Awake, they are cracking apart like ice on a moving river, but in sleep Frodo shifts closer to Sam and seeks the familiar comfort he knows is there.

And in that moment Sam lets himself do what he has forced himself to hold off doing for countless long days and nights. He opens the doors into the most secret places in his heart, where the plaintive wishes of a needy child are a constant keening wail. Sam thinks of what the Shire would look like at this moment, what it would be to be sitting on the front step of Bag End with a pipe and an ale and Frodo reading old tales from one of his books.

Sam's never heard the word 'homesick', but he'd understand it better than most of the people who know the term. If only the Ring could be abandoned, given over to some hero who could carry it in Frodo's stead. Surely there's someone out there strong enough to wear it, to understand the need to destroy it? Sam's good at picking the size of a character at first impression, he'd find a suitable bearer right quick.

"Sam." The word is a whisper and it makes Sam jump. Frodo has gone cold, all the warmth sucked out by the blackest part of the night.

"Go back to sleep, Mr Frodo," Sam says gently, the quarrel earlier forgotten.

"No." Frodo raises himself on his hands, slinking in closer to Sam and nuzzling at the soft corner of his jaw. "Make me warm, Sam."

"If you wrap yourself in your cloak you'll be warm soon enough. You need your rest."

"Can't rest." Frodo's words are punctuated with lazy laps of his tongue against Sam's skin. "I can't, Sam. Help me, Sam. Take it and give it away. Give it away to a Man. Then we can go home. Don't you want to go home?"

Frodo's teeth on his earlobe and ah! Frodo's hand pressing against his britches and how Sam's missed this, wants this.

"Yes, Sam. Yes." And the ess trails off in a hiss that makes Sam's blood as icy as Frodo's clever fingers on his skin. He shoves at Frodo's shoulders, trying to bring his breath back from panting.

"You're not Frodo," Sam says.

Frodo laughs. "Who else could I be?"

But the illusion is more obvious when Sam can look at Frodo's face and hear his voice for what it really is. The eyes, Frodo's lovely eyes that Sam has often thought belonged in rhymes and poetry, are rolled back in their sockets, glittering white slits in the faint light. The mouth curls up in a smile that Sam wishes was rotten, debauched, _wrong_ somehow but isn't, is the same old Frodo smile. This creature crouches where Frodo would be sitting in an ordinary fashion, this creature blinks Frodo's eyelashes down in a dark fan on Frodo's bruised, shadowed skin.

"Nobody will ever know you like I know you," Frodo whispers. "How could someone who knows every cranny of your mind betray you? And what you want is so easy, Sam. Give me to someone else to carry, and take Frodo back to your home. What could be simpler? Such a simple wish."

Sam swallows, his throat dry. Frodo's smile widens. "I make him feel so good, Sam. He's in here with me now. He wants you to feel good, too. Let me be part of you. I can give you want you want. It's what we both want. Look how good I am to him." And Frodo's shoulders hit the ground with a harsh thud as his back arches up, spine a whipcord as he writhes. One hand grasps for the chain at his neck, clinging to the Ring so hard the knuckles are deadly white. Then he stills, sits up, and continues speaking as if nothing happened. "Don't you want that? I can give you it, Sam. Forever. Never grow old, never die. Just you and your Frodo together in bliss. Give me up, let me go home, and I promise you all that you could wish for." Then his voice drops low, concerned, just as Frodo always sounds nowtimes. "Help me, Sam. Make it stop."

"Stop! Please, stop," Sam sobs, hands reaching out to hold Frodo, protect him from this thing inside his skin.

"You'll have nothing without me, Sam. What else could you possibly expect to have? Frodo doesn't need you, how could he need a lack-witted clumsy oaf? He's laughing at you inside, you know. Whenever he looks at you, contempt wells up in him. Disgust." Frodo's lip curls in a sneer. "There's nobody but me, Sam, but you don't need anybody else when you have me. I can give you everything."

"It's just words. Words and lies," Sam says, but it's difficult to tell himself that when it's Frodo speaking to him, Frodo's lips flushed dark and parted in anticipation of a thorough kissing. Frodo with his eyes so eerie and cruel.

"I can do more than just words, Sam. I can make him bleed." Frodo raises his arm and bites down on the top of the wrist, bottom teeth flicking teasingly close to breaking the skin over the vein on the underside. The top teeth pierce down and draw glistening beads, staining his lips sinfully darker than they already were.

"Don't!" Sam shouts. "Don't hurt him!"

Frodo laughs cruelly, making no move to wipe his mouth clean. "Graceless, senseless, ugly fool. Frodo could never love you."

"Maybe not. But I love him." Sam's voice trembles on the brink of tears.

Frodo picks at the welts where his teeth broke the skin, drawing more blood up in the cuts, humming to himself as if bored by the conversation. Sam grabs Frodo's hand, grinding the bones together with the strength of the grip, and wrenches it away from the wounds. With a gasp, Frodo recoils from the pain, eyes wide and sleep-addled and so familiar Sam's heart would break if it wasn't ripped already.

"Sam?" Frodo asks in a small voice. But Sam can't look at him.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam drinks the last drop from his bottle and eats lembas until he's wanting liquid again, and Frodo sits in his orc-clothes and rubs at the soreness on his shoulder where poison aches under the skin. And perhaps it's because everything else is so dirty and black and filthy in the horrible little room, but the Ring seems to almost glow red in the lamplight. The glint reminds Sam somewhat of Sting, the negative image of the protective blue shine of the sword.

And Sam was only Ring-bearer for a little while, but it doesn't take much time to learn the spell of it. The way it can make the skin thrum with wanting, the calming sensation on the brain. Frodo's wrist ghosts across it on the way to rub at his shoulder again and his eyes close with a sort of relief, and Sam finds he can't grudge that anymore. Perhaps the Ring's wormed itself into his heart as it has his master's, or perhaps Sam is simply finally admitting that there's naught else that brings poor Frodo comfort anymore.

Sam fancies he can almost feel the press of Frodo's skin against the metal, the painful needing that shoots down Frodo's spine at the touch. Then the edge of Frodo's thumb traces a lazy circle around the Ring and Sam _knows_ he can feel it, like a whisper that misses his brain entirely and runs straight down every nerve ending on his body. He groans without meaning to, a half-coherent sound pushing past his clenched teeth. Frodo's eyes open again halfway and gaze at Sam, beckoning without a word, and then Frodo's nose begins to bleed in a sluggish and obscenely wet red trickle.

It makes his mouth taste metallic, like the Ring would if Sam were to kiss that. The thought takes him by surprise and makes him bite at Frodo's lower lip. Frodo's fingers are pinching wickedly at Sam's arms and it stings like wasps, and Sam doesn't understand anything anymore. How can something so hateful and wrong feel so lovely?

Sam's fingers find the fastenings of the borrowed clothes Frodo wears and undo them easily, seeking to touch again the skin he'd thought lost to him forever. It's hot, burning hot, and so is Frodo's slick and gory mouth on his own. Hotter than tea in summer, hotter than fever, hotter than peppers. Sam's always been fond of the taste of things, like all hobbits he gains much pleasure from the mouth, but nothing has ever tasted like Frodo's tongue and lips do now. It's the taste of almost-overripe fruit, walking the knife-edge between sweetness and rot.

As Sam runs his fingers over Frodo's chest they encounter the fine links of the chain hanging there. And he won't, he daren't, for it would be disaster to fall under that enchantment but Frodo's hand is pushing, forcing Sam's hand down and it touches the Ring and Sam feels sparks through his bones like black lightning. Frodo's body jerks, puppet-like, and Sam can feel his own nose begin to bleed as well. And the Ring is so cold, ice and snow and midnight cold, it's as cold as they are hot and Frodo's hands leave Sam's over the Ring and hurry down to the straining bulge between his legs, and Sam pulls on the Ring so the chain cuts into the back of Frodo's neck and the pain seems to put some tiny measure of clarity back into Frodo's eyes.

"We shouldn't," Sam starts to say and the Ring _hisses_ , catlike, and it takes all the control Sam has ever had to fight the wave of insistent sensation, the silent scream inside his head that says _yes, yes, good and warm and precious and forever and want and yes and Frodo and now_ in a constant wordless litany.

And Frodo reaches up and coats his fingertips in the blood on Sam's upper lip, bringing them back to his own bloodied mouth and lapping at them, eyes steady on Sam's and veiled with black spidery lashes. "Pleasesampleasesam," he whispers all as one word, and it might be a plea and it might be an announcement of his intended plans for the near future, and it might be both at once. And there are tears in Frodo's eyes, eyes that seem so confused and half-alive and dark. Tears of horror and fear and resolve and desire and Sam doesn't think that he could say no if his life was counting on the thought.

There's a whisper in the back of Sam's head that perhaps Frodo's sorrow is a trick of the Ring, a way to worm into the place in Sam's heart that thinks only of making Frodo happy. But then another thought, a refusal of the first, damps down on it hard, and perhaps that's a trick of the Ring too. At least, a trick of Sam's own making brought on by the ghosts of wanting in his head. He needs this, needs Frodo's touch and Frodo's voice and Frodo's mouth, for without it Sam fears he may drown in things he hardly understands but feels all the same.

Frodo's mouth Frodo's mouth Frodo'smouth frodosmouth it blurs and blends and bleeds and it's the only concept in Sam's head as Frodo takes Sam deep into the slick heat. Frodosmouthfrodosmouth and then a dagger of something so sharp it's probably pain under the shuddering pleasure, the Ring on its chain brushing against the skin of Sam's thigh and Sam pulls away, appalled at his reaction and how very, very much he wants to lose himself in that reaction while the world falls apart around him.

Frodo yowls at the loss of Sam's warmth and scrabbles forward on lust-clumsy hands, biting at the roll of flesh above Sam's hip by way of a scolding. Their eyes lock for a long beat and then Frodo smiles a sly smile, lifting the Ring to his mouth and licking his redwetred tongue-tip out over the curve of the metal, sliding it between his lips before dipping his head down again.

" _No_ ," Sam manages to gasp out, pushing Frodo's shoulders away with hands that shake like leaves in wind. If he lets that happen it will be over. The fight lost. And they can't lose. They _can't_. He chants it in his mind until the throb in every vein of his body lessens and he can breathe again. Frodo's panting too, jaw slack as he lets the Ring tumble from his mouth. A thread of spit webs it to his lip and Sam's hand is trembling as he reaches out to break that link.

Frodo collapses so slowly it's almost like a dance, a creature made of weightless paper drifting down to earth. Sam catches him, afraid that he's fallen into a swoon, but Frodo's eyes are alert as he looks up, pupils wide and dark and endless.

"It's taking everything from me," Frodo whispers the words like a death knell. And perhaps there's a grain of truth in it, because if things go on as they are then they're as doomed as wax in fire. But not yet. Not yet, and maybe that's as close as Sam comes to having hope when all is said and done. An end must come, towers fall, the sun set. But _not yet_.

"Not yet." Sam couples the words with a kiss to Frodo's mouth, and it tastes of old blood and heartbreak. Sam's tears paint clean white streaks in the rusty patches on Frodo's face, light kiss after light kiss after light kiss.

Frodo weeps as Sam presses more kisses down his chin and throat and chest, skin tight and frail and dirty and real. Not lost yet, Sam thinks, and if that's true then it's not too late. Frodo's hands come up around Sam's neck and rest there, as if too weak to move or hold on.

So Sam holds on for the both of them, lifting Frodo to sit more comfortably in Sam's lap as he did only an hour before a few feet away from this spot. So much to happen in such a small amount of time, and there's still miles to walk and days to live through yet before they might have another chance. If they ever do.

 _No_ , Sam chides himself. Thinking like that is what gets battles lost. He buries his face in the crook of Frodo's neck, breathing in the dust and grit and grime of all the dark roads they've walked together, and underneath all that the sweet smell of sunshine, still caught in the dark curls behind Frodo's ears even after so much night.

"Oh, Sam," Frodo says, and they kiss again and it's honey and cream and goodmorning and goodnight and a whole lifetime of lazy mornings and busy afternoons at once. And Sam feels certain, sure to his bones, that nothing could ever harm that, taint that. If they die tomorrow, if the world falls into ruin, that kiss will hover in memory and time and never fade. All the torture and death that this room and this tower cannot stand against the purity of it.

But eventually it must end and their mouths draw apart, and Frodo draws in a deep breath and stands on unsteady feet until he's sure enough to walk about and dress himself once more. And Sam's heart lifts, because it seems more likely with every passing second that things will turn out for the best, somehow. That there is happiness to come, that eventually every story will get the ending that it should.

They are going to be all right.

But not yet.


End file.
